On Tuesday (22 Feb), Zhao Zheng, a former deputy lead of the Data Management Unit created by the Ministry of Health (MOH) to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, was sentenced to 18 weeks of jail for leaking the daily number of COVID-19 cases to a WeChat group with 50 people.
Worst still, the 37-year-old Singaporean would sometimes offer a small prize to those who managed to guess the correct figures.
Ms Zhao, 4D and TOTO might be a legal source of gambling in Singapore but predicting the number of COVID-19 infections definitely has different implications because you’re betting on actual human lives.
Initial Arrest and Charges
Ms Zhao had been arrested in April 2020 for leaking the number of COVID-19 cases in advance to a WeChat group comprising 49 other persons on 22 different occasions between 16 March and 16 April 2020.
Thus on 14 April 2021, Zhao was given more than 20 charges under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) for wrongful communication of information that she had access to because of her former position, and unauthorised access to a computer to acquire said confidential information.
Reportedly, she had sent the information to the group before MOH officially released the information. The people inside the private group were also not granted permission to handle such confidential information.
Additionally, Ms Zhao had accessed an Excel document titled “master” on 28 March 2020, to acquire classified details of a COVID-19 case in order to inform the co-accused Tang Ling the status of the case even though she didn’t have the authorisation.
Court Proceedings
In the end, Ms Zhao pleaded guilty to 12 charges, mostly for the wrongful communication of information under the OSA.
Another 12 charges are still under consideration.
According to the court hearings, Ms Zhao had been working as an Assistant Director of the Biostatistics and Research Branch of the Public Health Division of MOH before the pandemic happened.
Before she started working under the Ministry in July 2008, she signed an undertaking to safeguard official information and was informed of the Official Secrets Act (OSA).
She acknowledged, comprehended and agreed that all official information handed to her over the course of her duties were strictly confidential and classified.
When MOH’s COVID-19 operations commenced around Feb 2020, Ms Zhao became the deputy lead of the Data Management Unit.
Her position gave her access to a “SharePoint” folder on the MOH Intranet which contained documents and spreadsheets used by the Ministries in its COVID-19 handling.
Among the files included a spreadsheet titled “master”, which aggregated information such as the gender, nationality, and addresses of all COVID-19 cases in Singapore.
There was also another spreadsheet dedicated to confirmed COVID-19 cases, which contained more biodata of the individuals, as well as their movements and activity patterns.
Hence, Zhao was in the position to know how many COVID-19 cases there were in Singapore on any given day, before the information was disseminated to the public by MOH, and she had access to the individual profiles of the cases.
As early as 16 March 2020, Ms Zhao started sharing the number of confirmed cases with a WeChat group that had 49 other members, who were all mothers. She warned them not to promulgate the information because she was cognizant that such information shouldn’t be shared in the first place.
On some occasions, she would even share other details, like how many were imported cases.
In others, she would host a “guessing game” with the group, asking the members to guess how many COVID-19 cases there were that day.
Those who came closest to the correct number would be congratulated, or awarded with 1 yuan ($0.21) as a “good luck” gift.
Not certain what “good luck” there is to being right on the nail regarding the COVID-19 caseload, but the participants certainly won themselves a trip to the nearest police station to have their statements taken.
Besides what was equivalent to a breach of a non-disclosure agreement, except this case is much more severe, she even retrieved a specific case profile for a member of her chat group, named Tang Ling, because she wanted to know more about a COVID-19 case that happened at her condominium.
Ms Tang was fined $10,000 in August last year for her instigation and involvement.
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The Gravitas of the Situation
The biggest problem with Ms Zhao sharing such sensitive information in advance was that public agencies had to redirect their resources to deal with the consequences of the leaks.
The first report of premature release of COVID-19 case information was lodged by a member of the public on 16 April 2020, when they saw the numbers published on an Instagram story post before the MOH officially released the figures that day.
Then on 18 April 2020, the Head of MOH’s Case Reporting Team also made a police report, stating that the ministry suspected that the daily numbers of COVID-19 had been leaked for a few days in April 2020.
As the saying goes, “only two can keep a secret when one of them is dead”, let alone 49 other people.
Because the country’s battle against COVID-19 involved numerous agencies cooperating in tandem, these agencies had to expend resources to assess if the leak was true, and if it was, then where it had originated from, who had access to the files, before finally locking in on the culprit.
Due to the leaks, the public service had to re-organise their approach for the pandemic, like ringfencing certain processes which inevitably slowed down the speed of information moving between agencies while investigations were ongoing.
For the same reason, Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Joshua Chua asked for six to nine months of jail for Ms Zhao, stating that the early exposure of COVID-19 related information has caused a range of consequences.
The Significance and Sensitivity of the Information
Given the unprecedented scale of the COVID-19 pandemic, which made the SARS outbreak pale in comparison, COVID-19 case statistics was something the public was extremely concerned about and there was “anxiety surrounding the numbers”.
Readers should also be reminded that these leaks happened before the first Circuit Breaker that Singapore experienced.
“[The numbers] can signal increased restrictions. The perception of an impending tightening of other measures can have large economic significance on the markets, retailers, employers, and travellers,” DPP Chua said.
The confidentiality of the information and the manner in which it is disseminated is important to ensure that it doesn’t cause undue panic among the population.
By now, we’ve already witnessed what kiasu Singaporeans in panic mode looks like: it’s flooding the supermarkets, emptying out the shelves of tissue paper, hand sanitisers, masks, rice, and other essentials like Armageddon is upon us.
We’re more blasé about the pandemic now that it’s been more than two years and we’re mostly vaccinated, but it was probably “Hell on Earth” mode for the cashiers and supermarket employees for months on end during the first phase.
And remember, back in April 2020, the vaccination rates were quite low at that point.
This meant that crowding at supermarkets posed a higher risk of transmissions and clustered, local outbreaks of infections.
The guessing is no longer just “for fun” like a casual game of Bingo when it might cause such panic and unmanageable consequences.
Trying to control a population of over 5 million on a small island? Hello insanity.
Defence: Zhao “Empathised with Fellow Mothers”
In response to the Prosecutors’ demands, Defence Lawyer Diana Ngiam from Quahe Woo and Palmer asked for 18 weeks of jail time instead.
She argued that this was “an unprecedented time for all”, especially for her client who was “abruptly placed” in a position where she had to deal with such data.
Lawyer Ngiam noted that Zhao had to work long and stressful hours on a daily basis to analyse the data, while having to lead a team and organise the team members with barely any rest in between.
She added that Ms Zhao’s stress was “compounded by the fact that there was little to no guidance from anyone else as to how our client should manage the team, and the new job scope.”
The main reason why Ms Zhao had shared the information with the aforementioned WeChat group was because she empathised with the other members, who were all mothers.
Afterwards, Ms Ngiam stated that her client acknowledges and accepts the fact that she has made her mistakes.
To give more credence to the empathy argument and to appeal to the court’s pathos, Ms Ngiam said, “Our client wore many hats at the material time—one being a deputy head who had to deal and manage the daily COVID-19 data, on top of managing a team of people; our client was also a mother to three young children; a wife to her husband; a friend who empathised with fellow mothers out there who were equally worried about the COVID-19 situation.
“It was a multitude of these factors that consequently led our client to foolishly share the information prematurely with a close group of mothers.”
Ms Ngiam asserted that Ms Zhao’s motive behind the information sharing was merely to placate the fears and uncertainty dwelling within the other mothers of the WeChat group.
On the other hand, the guessing game Ms Zhao made out of the COVID-19 infection cases was just a way she “mistakenly thought” she could use to “lighten up the mood”, since that period of time was filled with heightened emotions and stress for everyone.
Final Verdict
In the final sentencing, the judge informed Ms Zhao that she had breached the trust and confidence that was placed upon her.
In trying times like the pandemic, it is crucial to maintain public confidence in the Government’s ability to control the situation and maintain the confidentiality of highly sensitive information.
However, the judge accepted that Ms Zhao had no “nefarious motivation” behind her actions.
Although the defence proffered a psychiatric report showing that their client had been struggling with an adjustment disorder, the judge did not find that it was “seriously mitigatory” in terms of her accountability and burden of guilt.
After all, Ms Zhao had shared such sensitive information 22 times in a span of a month, almost once every day, like it was idle gossip instead of highly classified information.
Ms Zhao will be allowed to speak to her husband before serving her prison sentence.
For each charge under the OSA, she could have been jailed for up to two years, fined up to S$2,000, or both.
All things considered, Ms Zhao had got off lightly, though she still has more charges to answer for.
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Featured Image: Ministry of Health